If you’re going to read only one article about the incredibly FUBAR’ed state of what’s falsely referenced as “law and order” in St. Louis County, Missouri (and as it directly relates to the highly-publicized murder of Michael Brown by Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson, on August 9th), drop whatever it is you’re doing and checkout Radley Balko’s 14,000+ word exposé, just published over at the Washington Post’s website, a couple of hours ago.
For those unfamiliar with “the way things are” in suburban St. Louis (and, I'm sure as it is to a lesser extent throughout this country), from a truly systemic perspective, you’re not going to believe how incredibly down and twisted life is.
In fact, I’ll go as far as to state: Balko might as well reserve his plane tickets for New York City next year when they hand out the 2015 Pulitzers. (Yeah, it’s that compelling. You're going to read about people that are actually being ticketed/arrested in suburban St. Louis for doing things such as wearing baggie pants and working on their cars on their own property. I think one of the more outrageous instances--there are so many reported in this expansive piece--involves the Bel-Ridge Police Department; but, you'll have to read the story for more on that.)
(Due to the extreme length of this story, I’ve taken the liberty of excerpting a fairly large chunk of it from the very top of the article. And, believe it or not, it barely scratches the surface of the rampant, systemic racism and oppression of the impoverished in the St. Louis area that is much more incredibly and fully documented throughout the balance of Balko’s story.)
How St. Louis County, Missouri profits from poverty
By Radley Balko
Washington Post
September 3 at 1:30 PM
On March 20th in the St. Louis County town of Florissant, someone made an illegal U-turn in front of Nicole Bolden. The 32-year-old black single mother hit her brakes, but couldn’t avoid a collision. Bolden wasn’t at fault for the accident, and wanted to continue on her way. The other motorist insisted on calling the police, as per the law. When the officer showed up, Bolden filled with dread.
“He was really nice and polite at first,” Bolden says. “But once he ran my name, he got real mean with me. He told me I was going to jail. I had my 3-year-old and my one-and-a-half year old with me. I asked him about my kids. He said I had better find someone to come and get them, because he was taking me in.” The Florissant officer arrested and cuffed Bolden in front of her children. Her kids remained with another officer until Bolden’s mother and sister could come pick them up.
The officer found that Bolden had four arrest warrants in three separate jurisdictions: the towns of Florissant and Hazelwood in St. Louis County, and the town of Foristell in St. Charles County. All of the warrants were for failure to appear in court for traffic violations. Bolden hadn’t appeared in court because she didn’t have the money. A couple of those fines were for speeding, one was for failure to wear her seatbelt, and most of the rest were for what defense attorneys in the St. Louis area have come to call “poverty violations” — driving with a suspended license, expired plates, expired registration, and a failure to provide proof of insurance...
Balko continues to narrate how
"The Florissant officer first took Bolden to the jail in that town, where Bolden posted a couple hundred dollars bond and was released at around midnight. She was next taken to Hazelwood and held at the jail there until she could post a second bond. That was another couple hundred dollars. She wasn’t released from her cell there until around 5 pm the next day. Exhausted, stressed, and still worried about what her kids had seen, she was finally taken to the St. Charles County jail for the outstanding warrant in Foristell..."
...By the time Bolden got to St. Charles County, it had been well over 36 hours since the accident. “I hadn’t slept,” she says. “I was still in my same clothes. I was starting to lose my mind.” That’s when she says a police officer told her that if she couldn’t post bond, they’d keep her in jail until May. “I just freaked out,” she says. “I said, ‘What about my babies? Who is going to take care of my babies?” She says the officer just shrugged.
“It’s different inside those walls,” Bolden says. “They treat you like you don’t have any emotions. I know I have a heavy foot. I have kids. I have to work to support them. I’ve also been taking classes. So I’m late a lot. And when I’m late, I speed. But I’m still a human being...”
Balko reports that this was Bolden's second arrest, and Michael-John Voss, the co-founder of legal aid group ArchCity Defenders and the person assigned to represent Bolden, wasn't available to help her immediately. Since Foristell's municipal court was in session only once every two weeks, she would remain in jail.
...“She was crying as I explained the situation to her,” Voss says. “So then I started to cry as I explained it her. One of the really frustrating things about what’s happening here is that this system is breaking good people. These are people just trying to get by, just trying to take care of their families.” Voss’ eyes well up as he talks about Bolden. This isn’t just an attorney defending his client. It’s a guy who is concerned about what’s happening to another human being…
…
…The Foristell warrant stemmed from a speeding ticket in 2011. As mentioned before, Bolden didn’t show up in court because she didn’t have the money to pay it, and feared they’d put her jail. It’s a common and unfortunate misconception among St. Louis County residents, especially those who don’t have an attorney to tell them otherwise. A town can’t put you in jail for lacking the money to pay a fine. But you can be jailed not appearing in court to tell the judge you can’t pay — and fined again for not showing up. After twice failing to appear for the Foristell ticket, Bolden showed up, was able to get the warrant removed, and set up a payment plan with the court. But she says that a few months later, she was a couple days late with her payment. She say she called to notify the clerk, who told her not to worry. Instead, the town hit her with another warrant — the same warrant for which she was jailed in March...
...Bolden’s bond was set at $1,700. No one she knew had that kind of money. Bolden broke down; she cried, she screamed, and she swore. She was given a psychological evaluation, and then put on suicide watch. She finds that memory particularly humiliating. Bolden would remain in jail for two weeks, until Foristell’s next municipal court session. She wouldn’t let her children come visit her. “I didn’t want them to see me like that,” she says. “I didn’t want them to think it was normal, that it was okay for one of us to be in jail. I missed them so much. But I wasn’t going to let them see me like that.”
We're told that while Bolden was in jail
"...she missed a job interview. She fell behind in her paralegal studies. When she finally got her day in court… '...I was sad, and I was mad,' she says. 'I smelled bad. I was handcuffed. I missed my kids. I didn’t feel like a person anymore.'"
...Voss was able to get Bolden’s bond reduced to $700, but that was still too much for Bolden or her family to pay. The judge also told Voss that he wouldn’t consider an indigency motion until the next session, which meant another two weeks in jail. Bolden was taken back to her cell. The next day, her mother borrowed against a life insurance policy to post her daughter’s bond. “It doesn’t just affect you,” Bolden says. “It affects your family. Your kids. Your friends. My mother is disabled. And she had to help me out. My sister had to put her life on hold to watch my kids.”
Stories like Bolden’s abound across the St. Louis area... ...the vast majority of the people swept up into the St. Louis County municipal court system don’t have attorneys to inform them of their rights or to negotiate with judges and prosecutors...
…
…Some of the towns in St. Louis County can derive 40 percent or more of their annual revenue from the petty fines and fees collected by their municipal courts. A majority of these fines are for traffic offenses, but they can also include fines for fare-hopping on MetroLink (St. Louis’ light rail system), loud music and other noise ordinance violations, zoning violations for uncut grass or unkempt property, violations of occupancy permit restrictions, trespassing, wearing “saggy pants,” business license violations, and vague infractions like “disturbing the peace” or “affray” that give police officers a great deal of discretion to look for other violations. In a white paper released last month (PDF), the ArchCity Defenders found a large group of people outside the courthouse in Bel-Ridge who had been fined for not subscribing to the town’s only approved garbage collection service. They hadn’t been fined for having trash on their property, only for not paying for the only legal method the town had designated for disposing of trash.
“These aren’t violent criminals,” says Thomas Harvey, another of the three co-founders of ArchCity Defenders. “These are people who make the same mistakes you or I do — speeding, not wearing a seatbelt, forgetting to get your car inspected on time. The difference is that they don’t have the money to pay the fines. Or they have kids, or jobs that don’t allow them to take time off for two or three court appearances. When you can’t pay the fines, you get fined for that, too. And when you can’t to court, you get an arrest warrant.”...
Readers are reminded that arrest warrants are publicly-available info. And, any potential landlord or employer records search would highlight those realities. Stating the obvious:
..."So they can prevent someone from getting a job, housing, job training, loans, or financial aid. 'So they just get sucked into this vortex of debt and despair,' Harvey says."
The death of Michael Brown at the hands of Ferguson, Missouri police officer Darren Wilson last August, and the ensuing protests, crackdowns, and violence have drawn lots of attention to St. Louis County, and spawned lots of discussions about issues like race and racism, police brutality, poverty, police shootings, police militarization, and the relationship between police departments and the communities they serve.
But these of course are problems that extend well beyond the St. Louis area. Local officials, scholars, and activists say that whatever happened between Brown and Wilson, St. Louis County’s unique political geography, heightened class-consciousness, and the regrettable history that created both have made the St. Louis suburbs especially prone to a Ferguson-like eruption…
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A must-read (and “must-click-on-the-links”) comment from Kossack Eric Nelson:
• Yes, a very good place to start -
From the posted WaPo article:
Some of the towns in St. Louis County can derive 40 percent or more of their annual revenue from the petty fines and fees collected by their municipal courts. A majority of these fines are for traffic offenses
- emphasis added
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...completely ignoring a law passed to stop the profiling and targeting of AA's.
Concerns by the citizens of Missouri (Dems) and the Missouri legislature regarding allegations of racial profiling by law enforcement prompted the passage of state law Section 590.650,
I wrote Dairy on the assault on minorities that continues despite laws to end the targeting of AA's:
"Post Racial" America: year 2014 | 14 years of anti-racial profiling law ignored
Here is the pdf on the results and Ferguson county as one example.
Check out this graph of Ferguson (scroll down 3/4 of a page) it is repeated all over in Missouri
Thx bobswern - this of course is not limited to Missouri. This systematic targeting is happening all over America - a story that needs exposing - big time - good to see it being written up
by Eric Nelson on Wed Sep 03, 2014 at 07:41:07 PM EDT
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Also per the comments, Kossack Phoebe Loosinhouse published an outstanding prequel--of sorts--to this post on August 18th: "The Seamy Underbelly Of Ferguson Starts To Appear (Updated)."
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